Now we get to the juicy part, the core of the book, where we discuss the 6 power skills.
I think the best way to describe them is via a real-life case study where the skills are actually put into action. Otherwise, it will be a dull, academic discussion.
In the book Creative Confidence, authors Tom and David Kelley narrate the story of Doug Dietz, an engineer at GE Healthcare, who had headed up the team that built a revolutionary new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine for hospitals.
The scanner was a marvel of engineering, and was submitted for an International Design Excellence Award, which is seen as the Oscars of design. Doug and his team were rightfully very proud of their accomplishment.
A number of hospitals purchased the machine, and Doug decided that he wanted to go and see it in operation in a hospital. The hospital he chose happened to be a children’s hospital.
The first patient to arrive was a tiny, frail little girl.
As she came close to the machine, she quickly turned around, grabbed her dad’s legs, and started to cry bitterly.
She said, “Dad, I’m scared. I don’t want to go into this thing.”
Her dad tried to comfort her: “We’ve talked about this. You can be brave.”
Unfortunately, this was to no avail. He looked at the nurse helplessly. She picked up a phone and called for an anaesthetist. This surprised Doug, who was aware that you did not need to be sedated to get an MRI scan.
The nurse indicated to the terrified child, saying the only away she could get the job done was to knock the child out.
Immediately Doug knew something was wrong. He knew that something needs to change with this machine. He went back to his team and related the whole story.
The team went back to the drawing board and start putting their ideas together. What do we do? There was no chance of reinventing the machine from the ground up, because that would literally cost the business millions of dollars and probably even bankrupt them.
So what could they do?
Eventually, after going through the whole process, they came up with a brilliant idea: they would make the machine child-friendly by disguising it to look like a children’s ride at theme park.
They came up with a few possible themes. One, was a pirate ship theme. Another was a fairy tale palace theme. The team would use carefully-designed decals to achieve this.
The idea was that when you looked at that machine, it literally looked like a pirate ship or a fairy tale palace.
But they did not stop there. They also came up with a narrative that was based on the theme of the machine, and the nurse would read the story to the child, pretending as if the MRI machine was an actual pirate ship or a palace.
This would add to the experience, turning the scary MRI scanner into a little adventure.
They decided to put their ideas to the test. Doug went back the hospital to observe the newly-designed machine in action. What happened next was critically important to his career.
As the next patient, also a tiny, frail little girl, came in for a scan, the nurse welcomed her and started to read the story. Rather than being terrified of the machine, the child was intrigued. Soon, she became absorbed in the story and started to enjoy the experience.
The result? She happily and voluntarily went into the machine and the scan was done without a hitch.
As they left the MRI room, the little girl held her father’s hand, looked up at him and she said, “Dad, can we please come back tomorrow?”
It was at that point Doug knew that they had succeeded.